"I realised the need for an alternative credit assessment mechanism for new to credit customers when I myself got rejected for a consumer durables loan at Croma."

Having grown up outside India and spent a considerable time in the US, I was very excited about the prospects of the credit scoring market back home. I believed that just the way banks were using credit bureau data to process loans, I could build a company to take credit scores to the citizens directly. What I did not understand then was how low the awareness among the public was about credit scores and their significance.

Further, I realised the need for an alternative credit assessment mechanism for new to credit customers when I myself got rejected for a consumer durables loan at Croma. While the market was open and opportunities were huge, there was a trade-off that was needed to be done. On one side, I could take the product to consumers by spending huge sums of money or I could start lending from my own books which would push up interest rates since my borrowing cost would be high.

While debating which route to take, I sensed scope in becoming a partner to banks and help them to lend to consumers easier with improved credit scoring models and also developing scoring mechanism for customers without a credit history.

Building partnerships were easier said than done because we had to prove to bankers that we were better at understanding borrowers, a game seasoned bankers have been playing more than 30 years. Having spent days trying to get meetings with top bankers to pitch the product, I finally made a breakthrough with Fullerton India with whom we offered a prototype and pitched to them that this is what future looked like.

Simultaneously, Paytm’s impact in the payments world had an effect on the lending side as well as banks did not want to miss out on the tech initiatives in lending. That is when fintech companies like us started getting access to top-level management in banks. This coupled with the success of India Stack and rapid digitisation of products in the world of finance helped us climb to processing 500 GB of data per day from around 50MB in the initial days. Today, we are working with 25 leading institutions in India including the likes of ICICI Bank, State Bank of India and even Bajaj Finance. We have processed applications for 6 million customers in the past two years and I am confident of scaling it up to 100 million in the future as well.

(As told to Pratik Bhakta)

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